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Chapter 12: Live Now, Pray Later

Osho,Jews, Christians, Hindus, Jainas, Mohammedans put their hope in a future life, but I don’t see the same hope among people around you. Why is this so?

There are three ways to live. Only one is authentic; two are pseudo. First, let me explain to you the pseudo ways, then it will be easier to understand the right way. These are the two pseudo ways most people have lived and are living: the first is in the yesterday, the past; the second is in the tomorrow, the future. Both are really ways of deceiving yourself. The yesterday is no more, and the tomorrow has not come yet.

The yesterday cannot be lived. Yes, only in imagination, but not truly. It is dead. There is no way to make it alive again. You cannot move backward in time. That which is gone is gone forever. But millions of people, ninety-nine point nine percent of people, have chosen to live either in the yesterday or in the tomorrow.

The tomorrow is not there and is not going to be there ever. It never comes, by its very nature. It is always coming, coming, coming.but it never comes. It is only a hope which is not going to be fulfilled. But hope is the most ancient psychological drug.

First let us look into the yesterdays, because at least they have been there. They cannot be again, but they have been there. Hindus have deliberated most in their philosophy about the life of these yesterdays, because Hinduism is the most philosophical of all the religions.

Hindus have divided time into four ages. The first is called sat yuga, the age of truth. That was in the very beginning of time. No historical record exists about it, no other kind of evidence exists for it; in fact, everything that exists gives evidence against it, because a man like Krishna, whom Hindus worship as the descendant of God in all his aspects, in his totality, even this man is not a man of truth. He lies.

He is a politician. He changes very easily. He promises - and goes against the promise. And this is their idea of God in his perfection! And to lie, for Krishna, is so easy. Even your third class politicians - of course, they are all third class; I should not use third class, because there is no other class of politicians - even they feel ashamed to lie. And when they are caught, they feel that they have not acted in good faith. Not so with Krishna, he is a perfect politician. He is not a perfect God, but a perfect politician. Lying is his business, deception is his whole game. And this age Hindus call the age of truth! And if this is the situation with their greatest man, what about the ordinary masses?